Funeral Music for Queen Mary

Apropos I suppose.

Hilariously Awful Opera Stagings #3: The Magic Flute

From Kenneth Branagh's movie version of The Magic Flute with Stephen Fry doing the translations. There's actually a lot in this movie that is genuinely fantastic, but that cannot change the fact that Papageno is running toward a giant pair of lips.

Happy Birthday Lenny

Victor Borge and Dean Martin

Hilariously Awful Opera Stagings #2: The Marriage of Figaro

From the Salzburg Festival 2006. Submitted without comment.

Fozzie sings Gershwin

Hilariously Awful Opera Stagings #1: Der Freischutz

Satanic evil comes to us in the form of a masturbating rabbit.

Rabbit of Seville

Because a good copy of What's Opera Doc is apparently not on youtube.

Ode to Joy played by 1000 Ukuleles

Care of the BBC Proms. God I miss them.

Roy Rogers threatening to beat the crap out of liberals

Nuff Said

The wonder of His work displays the internet

Just one week ago tonight, Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra gave a performance of Mahler 1 that is already being discussed in legendary terms. Thanks to the endless miracle of youtube, we can already watch it in full and see Abbado's new batonless appearance, Natalia Gutman's reappearance at the front of the LFO cello section and Wolfram Christ's reappearance at the front of the LFO violas, somebody moving their chair in the brass section and causing an embarrassing squeak between the first and second movements. Abbado's near-breakdown the moment the music ends, his eyeroll the moment he turns around to face a wall of bravos...the Mahler ain't bad either. Both Simon Rattle, his successor at the Berlin Philharmonic and Pierce Brosnan, his successor as James Bond, are shown as being in the audience.

Frank Zappa: Crossfire again

One year after the first appearance. The best thing in this is not in fact Zappa (though he is both hilarious and prescient) nor is it the omnipresent borderline fascism of the censors that were in the mainstream of discourse 20 years ago. No, the best thing about this is the obvious titillation Michael Kinsley gets out of quoting dirty song lyrics on CNN.

Frank Zappa on Crossfire

It's amazing how far we've come in 23 years. Truly amazing. Bob Novak (of blessed memory?) comes across as the centrist on this panel and the liberal, Tom Braden, says that Zappa's music makes him physically ill.

We're living in Zappa's world now, and thank god for that.

Rachmaninov: Big Hands

From Igutesman and Joo.

Bit of Fry and Laurie

The Sophisticated Song